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Castle 5-23: The Human Factor

I’m back in town after spending a few days away and still trying to catch up. Yes, that is why my recap for Castle hasn’t been posted yet. I did get a chance to watch the episode on Tuesday.

And some of the details have faded, so this is going to be a bit more general than I normally do.

The episode presented us with an intriguing start – a man was blown up in a car bomb, but when Castle and Beckett got to the scene, they found it locked down by Homeland Security.

They took any piece of information they could get, including the man’s wallet which was half a block away. He was known for his website that exposed government corruption.

Of course, that took a toll on his family. And it didn’t help when he started having an affair. But that’s when forensics finds a very interesting development, it wasn’t a car bomb – someone dropped a missile into the car like from a drone.

Castle, naturally, starts spinning conspiracy theories, and the one about the rise of the machines is out there (and pretty funny when Beckett uses his remote control toys to tease him about it). But the ones about the government trying to silence him don’t see so out there after all.

After being stonewalled quite a bit, they do learn that the drone wasn’t under the control of the government when it killed our victim. Someone else was running it.

Eventually, they track down the man who created the software that controls the drones. He had given it to our victim, but the victim sent it back. Even he didn’t want to release this to the general populace.

But someone copied it before it was sent back. Suspicion first calls on the victim’s assistant, who is fleeing to his family in the Middle East. But then we learn the victim’s son was hanging out in the office quite a bit.

Yep, he’s the one. He was upset by the affair on top of all the victim has put his family through, so he decided to use this drone control program to kill his father and make it look like the government did it.

Along the way, we finally got some cooperation from a man who works for the United States Attorney General. He works in a secret department that investigates cases like this that involve national security but also could create huge scandals. I thought it odd at one point when he sent Beckett in to follow a lead.

But it all makes sense at the end of the episode. He was so impressed by Beckett that he offers her a job. It would mean moving to DC, however. Beckett turns him down, but he says call me if you change your mind. From the previews next week, it’s obvious she is still thinking about it.

Obviously, Beckett won’t move to DC permanently. But will she take the job as our season ending cliffhanger? Or will we be left wondering what she will do as the season ends? I’ll be curious to see just how they play this one out.